Experiment Number One
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I let that sinking feeling in my bones guide me like a magnet to the source. After a few wrong turns, going in circles, and dead ends- I finally made it to the Dhasl hall. But I was too late.

When I ran through the corridor, looking for the cell Lieutenant Wallace was in, there was only one door ajar. Inside were a group of four soldiers, two holding Lieutenant Wallace down on his knees, one with a flashlight, and the other had a gun cocked to Lieutenant Wallace’s head. I burst my way into the room and screamed, “Stop!” before anyone had the chance to do anything. All the guards turned their attention toward me. Lieutenant Wallace twitched in their grasp, the disease taking over his body, leaving him unable to control his movements. He stared at me with dead eyes and a foaming mouth. But even though it was clear he was entering the late stages of the infection, I could tell he was still in there. There was something in his eyes that was pleading with me.

Screaming at me to leave.

“What is the purpose of this, Sargent?” The man with the gun said.

I took shallow breaths from my lungs, trying to prevent my throat from swelling. I thought that I could talk our way out of it. We could skip the blood bath if I could convince the guards that they didn’t have to kill Lieutenant Wallace.

“Sargent?”

I pulled my eyes away from Lieutenant Wallace and tried my best to put on the facade. “Yeah,” I cleared my throat. “George ordered the Infected to live.”

They all looked at one another. Even behind their helmets, I could tell they had difficulty believing me. “We had direct orders to terminate.”

“Orders have changed, Taylor wants him alive.”

“Why didn’t they tell us that over the private channel?”

“Because they didn’t want any interception after being compromised by the traitor.” The word felt sour on my tongue.

The guard lowered his weapon and watched me for a second. One of the men holding down Lieutenant Wallace said, “What are we doing? He’s getting a little hard to control.”

The guard replaced his gun with a long stick, “We should sort the situation out with George first. Just in case.” They let go of Lieutenant Wallace, who launched himself toward the guard with the flashlight, but they tased him with the stick before he could cause any real damage. Lieutenant Wallace fell defeated to the ground, twitching and dazed.

The guards left the room, but I stood behind, watching Lieutenant Wallace. I didn’t know what I was to do next. If I left him behind, there’s no telling when I will have another opportunity to get back in there. If I ran over to him and gave him the serum, the guard would have shot me before I even got the chance to distribute it.

In truth, I don’t know if the serum would work. I mean, it wasn’t intended for the purpose to cure. But did it matter? Ren Clash and Doctor Taylor said all those days before that the DNA from a power based M-Gene needed to be injected into the Infected. Would Serum M be enough for Lieutenant Wallace?

“Sargent, let’s get going.” The guards were outside of the room, waiting for me to leave. I looked between them and Lieutenant Wallace, trying to decide what path to take.

The option was given to me.

One of the guard’s walkies-talkies scratched, and a voice emitted through it. “Is the task done? Over.” The guards looked at me. “We were informed to stand-by.” The man paused. “Over.”

Whoever was on the radio was taking their time responding. I saw the guard with the gun raise it with his finger on the trigger. Ready to shoot at the command. I slowly moved towards Lieutenant Wallace, just enough to jump into action but not cause suspicion.

Inside, I was panicking. If bullets started flying in there, I had to replace a way to shield Lieutenant Wallace and me. There was nothing in that lifeless cell. My power was all I had.

I called to it.

“There was no order to abandon the mission on our end. Who relayed the message? Over.”

The guard raised his gun towards me. I put my hands out in front of me to look like an act of surrendering. I inched closer to Lieutenant Wallace’s body, now starting to regain his consciousness. At any moment, he would be up and agitated again.

“There’s a soldier here saying they received the message from George. Over.”

“George never gave that message. You have orders to neutralize the threat. Over.”

The bullets started flying before I had time to even think. All I had time to do was push my bolts out in an attempt to scorch the guards. I was perplexed to replace my power woven in front of me in a web of protection. A force field- a weak one at that. The blue light flickered dimly and the first round of bullets were lodged into the field, just mere inches away from my face.

“It’s the mutant!” One of the guards yelled. The shooting stopped, and the man spoke into his radio, “We found the girl. What are the orders? Over.”

Lieutenant Wallace was pulled out of his daze and weakly crawled over to me. He groaned and moaned as he reached a hand out, trying to grab onto my leg for a quick snack. “Lieutenant Wallace, it’s me.” He latched onto my boot and tried to pull me down to his level. His body was still weak from the shocks.

I shook him off. “Lieutenant Wallace,” I dropped the force field and threw myself to the ground. He tried to jump at me but I beat him to it by lightly zapping him with my bolts to keep him at bay as I dug through my bag to replace the Serum M and a syringe.

“George wants her delivered alive, over.”

The guards marched towards me. I found the objects and stuck the needle in to the thin metal atop of the vial and sucked up the liquid. I pulled it out and moved towards Lieutenant Wallace. The guards grabbed onto me before I could even inject it into his bloodstream.

They pulled me away. I had to drop the syringe to the ground to reach behind me and fry them with my powers. Before I even got the chance, Lieutenant Wallace leaped up onto one of the guards and started clawing his way at their skin. I was dropped to the floor, quickly forgotten as the other guard pulled out his gun in an attempt to shoot Lieutenant Wallace.

I threw myself at the guard, tackling him to the ground. He tried to shoot at me, but I fastened my nails into his neck before he even had the chance to grip his gun. I sent shocks through his skeletal system; purple skin lesions scratched beneath his skin and flowed to his brain. His eyes turned bloodshot and bulged out of their sockets. He gargled and convulsed beneath me. I didn’t let go until smoke drifted off of his discolored skin and his breathing dissipated. I gagged at the smell.

I tried not to dwell on it.

I looked over to the last two remaining guards, one holding down Lieutenant Wallace while the other was getting ready to plunge a knife deep into his skull. I quickly shot a blast of bolts toward the guard’s hand, sending the knife to scatter across the ground. I got up, ran towards the guard holding Lieutenant Wallace down, and pushed them. I didn’t do much to knock them down, but it left them in a state of vulnerability, giving Lieutenant Wallace a window to grab onto the man behind him and attack. The guard screamed. The other tried to pull the two apart, but it was too late. Lieutenant Wallace managed to bite a chunk out of his neck, causing blood to spew from the wound.

The last guard turned towards me. “What have you done?” They walked towards me hatefully without fear in their bones despite their disadvantage. “You stupid mutant. Do you know what you’ve done?” They grasped me by the neck and threw me on the ground. They pressed themselves on top of me. I pushed my hands out to blast them away, but they were pulled off of me before I could. They were dragged across the room, where Lieutenant Wallace devoured them like it was his last meal. I watched, fearing a human being eating another, but I quickly realized it wasn’t true. Lieutenant Wallace wasn’t a human, I mean like a normal human. He was infected, and that’s why he was doing monstrous acts.

I took the abandoned flashlight and frantically searched the ground for the syringe I had dropped earlier. When I found it, I made sure the serum didn’t somehow get contaminated. When I determined it looked fine, I ran to Lieutenant Wallace and stuck the needle into his neck. He reached back, trying to grab at me, but once I injected the serum into his system, all the black in his eyes faded away. All the infection inside him slowly diminished until he looked back up at me with pure blue eyes. He was back. I saved Lieutenant Wallace.

“Emerye,” his voice rasped out. “What happened?” He looked at the mess of bodies around him and slowly went up to touch his face, his fingers coming back coated in blood. His breaths turned heavy as his eyes widened in realization. “What did I do?”

My heart hurt for him. There was nothing at that moment I wanted to do more than to drop down to my knees and hug him. To reassure him it wasn’t his fault and that he wasn’t himself. But when I heard the guard’s radio voice say, “Update? Over.” I knew there was no time. We had to get out of there before backup came in.

“Lieutenant Wallace, I know this is hard for you, but they have plans to capture and kill us. There’s no more time.”

Lieutenant Wallace wasn’t surprised by the threat. He nodded in agreement, throwing all that happened out the window and snapping back into his military persona. “I have someone on standby waiting for us. All I have to do is call and they’ll be here within minutes.”

“Alright. Let’s leave this hell hole.”

Before we left the cell, Lieutenant Wallace stuck a knife through all of the dead men skull’s.